


Now Say Hello

by MisplacedLonelyHeartsAd



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Gen, Ghoul, Impala, Pre-Series, Stanford, Stanford Era, Summergen 2015, disregard of canon in s2e20, djinn, summergen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 16:10:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4926253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisplacedLonelyHeartsAd/pseuds/MisplacedLonelyHeartsAd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s late September, 2003. Sam’s been gone for a little over a year, John is distracted by the recent discovery of a secret third son, and Dean’s feeling lost, lonely, and distant. Dean goes on a near-disastrous djinn hunt, then makes an unexpected visit to Sam. With a special appearance by young Rudy. Written for zara_zee for Summergen 2015.</p>
<p>
  <em>Dean is never more aware of Sam’s absence as he is while alone behind the wheel of that car. How can he drive it and not think of Sam? He’ll find himself standing at a gas pump, waiting for his brother to return, before he remembers that Sam’s not buying candy in the mini-mart; he’s miles away and he’s not coming back.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now Say Hello

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zara_Zee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zara_Zee/gifts).



> This is my [Summergen 2015](http://spn-summergen.livejournal.com) story for zara_zee. I took my inspiration from two different prompts: “Dean on a solo hunt while Sam is at Stanford, missing his brother, taking silly risks and running into trouble that he barely gets out of” and “Djinn-verse (WIAWSNB). Dean finds his way to hunting and to a better relationship with his brother.”
> 
> Many thanks to my wonderful beta reader [frozen_delight](http://archiveofourown.org/users/frozen_delight) for her fantastic insight, extensive knowledge of canon, and great eye for detail. You’re the best!

* * *

 

 

> _There is an empty space next to you_  
>  _in the backseat of the station wagon._  
>  _Make it the shape of everything you need._  
>  _Now say hello._
> 
> —Richard Siken, from “You Are Jeff,” _Crush_

 

*****

“Take the Impala,” John says to Dean, more and more often these days. He’s bought a souped-up truck from a hunter acquaintance, and Dean wonders whether his father is going through a mid-life crisis, aggravated, maybe, by the fiery (though not unexpected) departure of his younger son. It’s been over a year, and they have settled into a new routine, roaming over the country, a week here, a couple of days there, no longer putting down even the tentative roots that they used to when Sam was still in school.

Dean thinks it’s strange and inefficient for them to drive two cars when most of the time they are going to the same places together, but he’s never dared say so to his father. He suspects that John means the Impala to serve as a distraction from the loss of Sam’s companionship. It’s done precisely the opposite. Dean is never more aware of Sam’s absence as he is while alone behind the wheel of that car. How can he drive it and not think of Sam? He’ll find himself standing at a gas pump, waiting for his brother to return, before he remembers that Sam’s not buying candy in the mini-mart; he’s miles away and he’s not coming back.

In place of his real life brother Dean’s concocted an imaginary one, cobbled together from Sam’s familiar catchphrases and best quips: _Sammy’s Greatest Hits,_ you might say, all your favorites, none of the stuff you’d rather not hear. It’s probably not healthy to have an imaginary brother at the age of twenty-four, but Sam’s voice—his quick, dry delivery of a witticism, his rising argumentative tone when frustrated, or his earnest delight in imparting a newly-learned fact—has intertwined itself so tightly around Dean’s own thoughts that he can’t get rid of it. Sam rides shotgun in Dean’s head, and he blames Imaginary Sam for the times when, following John’s truck down the freeway, he pictures himself letting his father speed off into the distance, taking the nearest exit, and losing himself in the back roads.

In his imagination, he always ends up heading west. To California. Entering the state at Needles like the Joads, crossing the desert and heading north, through cattle country, veering further west, passing farmland—cherries, artichokes, garlic—skirting redwood forests, rolling into lush-lawned suburbia, and arriving at last on his brother’s foreign doorstep. He never gets any further, though, not even in dreams.

*****

Dean calls Sam at Stanford, sometimes, in the first few months after Sam arrives there. An awkward heaviness always hangs in the air between them, even though they never speak of the night Sam left, or under what circumstances. In fact, they never find much to speak of, period. Dean has never thought about how non-verbal their communication is, impossible to convey over phone lines. Without the nuances of that second-nature unspoken language, their words come out flat, mundane, almost meaningless.

Now that hunting and their father have become taboo subjects, he and Sam are reduced to small talk, of all things, and it’s breaking his heart that their tight-knit bond has unraveled so far, so fast.

Small talk. Sam now asks him about the _weather_ , for Christ’s sake. “Is it snowing?”

“No,” Dean answers. It’s not snowing but it sure is cold. “Do you miss it?”

There is a tiny, palpable pause. “No,” Sam says. “Not really.”

Dean doesn’t call again.

 *****

“Rudy’s got a case,” John announces one morning late in September. He and Dean are breakfasting in a diner in Des Moines after a series of boring salt-and-burns that have taken them through three cemeteries and a morgue in the middle of the country.

Dean looks up from his coffee cup and tries to remember who Rudy is.

“He was tracking a djinn, but he lost track of it a few months back,” his father continues. “Now he thinks he’s found it again in California, place called Thalia, up north.”

“A djinn, really?” Dean perks up a little.

“Yeah. They’re rare, but Rudy’s a good tracker, and he knows his stuff.”

Dean shrugs. “I guess.”

“I thought you liked him,” John says, frowning.

“Yeah, he’s okay,” Dean replies. Rudy, if he recalls correctly, is a hockey fan who makes highly detailed scientific-type drawings of the monsters he encounters, drawings that John had greatly admired.

“He’s only a few years older than you,” John continues, “but you could learn a lot from him.”

“Mm-hmm,” Dean murmurs obediently. He pictures Sam’s reaction to this homily: probably an energetic eyeroll and a hard kick at Dean’s shin under the table. Suppressing a smile, he asks, “So, are we heading there now?”

John reaches for his cup. “I’m not going. You are.” He takes a gulp of coffee. “I’ve got to go to Minnesota.”

“Minnesota? Why?”

“Some stuff popped up. I’ll join you soon as I can.”

“What stuff?” Dean asks, but his father ignores the question, and Dean know better than to ask twice.

“I’ll just be there half a day. I’ll be right behind you. You’ll need a silver knife dipped in lamb’s blood. I’ve got one in the truck. Now you let Rudy run the show; it’s his hunt, hear?”

“Yeah, Dad, I know.”

“Don’t show off—”

“—and don’t do anything stupid,” finishes Dean. “I know, Dad,” he says, but he softens the impatience in his voice with a little smile.

“Take the Impala,” John says, as though it’s a favor.

*****

Rudy, Dean decides later, is a pain in the ass. He hasn’t been answering his phone, and Dean’s been waiting for three hours. It’s little wonder that most hunters are solitary, because nearly all of them will drive a guy nuts. Dean’s in a motel room in Thalia, California, contemplating the abundance of amateur paintings that adorn the walls, each one complete, Bob Ross style, with mountains, glassy lake, happy trees, and out-of-scale log cabin. Some of them have the addition of blotchy, Sasquatch-like silhouettes that Dean assumes are bears.

It hadn’t been hard to find Rudy’s room at the only motel in town and quietly break in, and now that Dean’s read all of Rudy’s notes and studied the map pinned to the wall, he figures he doesn’t need to gather much more information from Rudy himself. The djinn, according to Rudy, is holed up some distance from the town, in a large crumbling building that used to be an orphanage. In its photos, the school looks surprisingly elegant despite its derelict state, with red brickwork, romanesque arches, and even a couple of square towers. It sits on a large acreage of unprofitable farmland that hasn’t been cultivated since the orphanage was shut down in the 1930s, and is bordered on one side by dense woods.

Rudy told him, during their first communication, that they will have to trek through this forest to reach the place, since the school commands an extensive view of the only road in, and they need the element of surprise. Dean studies the map and figures that it will take a couple of hours to hike the woods.

He checks his phone, then sighs and sits in the armchair near the window. He reads the notes on the djinn again. He’s never encountered one before, and all John could tell him was that they were stealthy, solitary, liked to hide in ruined buildings, and were able to knock their victims out with a single touch, keeping them unconscious while they fed slowly, bleeding them dry.

This one, Rudy thinks, has been pulling its victims from a wide-ranging area. Rudy’s noticed an odd pattern of people, usually young, who are reported missing, return for a short time, then vanish again. Sometimes two siblings from the same family. _Djinn prefer young victims_ , Dean reads. _Can be killed with a silver weapon dipped in lamb’s blood._

It seems fairly straightforward, and Dean wonders whether Rudy actually needs backup on this job at all. Maybe John’s asked him to babysit Dean so he can go off on his mysterious trip to Minnesota alone. John’s been acting off for the past few months, quieter and less abrasive, and while these changes make him easier to live with, they unsettle Dean.

Dean dozes off with the notes in his lap. When he awakens with a start an hour later, he feels a sense of growing uneasiness. What if Rudy’s ditched him and taken off to the place already? He might even be in trouble.

Impatiently, Dean looks at his watch, then folds the map, along with a dim photocopy of the school’s floor plan, and stuffs them into his jacket pocket. He dials Rudy’s number and leaves him a last message: _I don’t know where you are and I’m going up to the school. Meet you at the northwest edge of the property._

The hike in the woods is pleasanter than Dean had imagined, and puts him in mind of outings when John would give up on trying to teach them something—tracking, in this case—and let him and Sam run wild. Days that felt like normal childhood, getting tired and dirty, fighting and falling asleep in the back seat of the car.

He stops to peer at the tiny compass on his watch, and Imaginary Sam feels so very real that he’s not startled to feel a light touch on his arm. When he turns, he has no time to be surprised by the hand that grabs the side of his head, and later he can only recall the impression of crackling blue light, like one of those lightning plasma globes, before slumping into oblivion.

*****

Dean’s flat on his back with a terrible pain at the back of his head, and someone is patting his cheek with more force than he thinks is reasonable. “Dean. Dean, come on, man,” he hears, and he’ll almost swear that the agitated voice is his brother’s, if not for the part of his brain informing him that it’s impossible because Sam is not here, and maybe this Imaginary Sam thing has gone a little too far.

“Shit. Goddammit, Dean, I’m not carrying you,” mutters the voice. Then, a little louder and with a hint of a tremor, “They’ll be back and I can’t fight and hang onto you and all this crap at the same time.”

Dean opens his eyes. Sam’s face is looming above his, and they both flinch. Sam lets out a relieved half-laugh. “Jesus,” he breathes. “Took you long enough.”

Dean’s mouth begins to form the word “What,” but Sam is already pulling him upright.

“Sorry,” Sam says when Dean groans and brings a hand to his head. “Think you can walk? We gotta hurry.”

Dean barely has time to glance around him and wonder why the woods look strange, much denser and somehow more sinister than he remembers, before Sam hauls Dean’s arm over his shoulder, and pulls, pushes, and prods Dean to his feet. “Sorry,” he says again as Dean stumbles. “It’s not far. You can do this.” He seems to be talking as much to himself as to Dean.

“Wait—” Dean gets out this time. “What are you doing here?”

“Shh. Just gotta get back to the cabin. We’ll be safe there for a while. Regroup.”

“Sam, wait. Tell me how you got here.” Dean’s brain is foggy; he tries to keep hold of a thought—a blue light, a monster—but it slips away.

“Dean, please, just shut up until we’re safe.” The urgency in Sam’s voice is enough to shut Dean up for the moment. He wrenches himself away with from his brother’s supporting arm.

“I can walk,” he says, as Sam looks doubtfully at him.

“Sure?” Sam asks.

“Yeah.” Dean takes a moment to look Sam over—he looks different, simultaneously both bigger and leaner than he remembers. Stronger, somehow, and despite the fact that he’s disheveled and sweaty and his hair looks more ridiculous than ever, confident. He’s carrying two bags, one over each shoulder: one’s a backpack with what looks like a small pickaxe, a crowbar, and a shotgun sticking out of it, and the other’s a heavy-looking duffel.

Dean puts a hand up to the back of his own head; his fingers come away slick with blood.

“Scalp wound,” Sam informs him. “Looks worse than it is. You hit your head pretty hard against a tree when you went down.”

“Uh-huh.” Dean makes the mistake of nodding, which causes him to suddenly retch and double over. Sam puts a hand on his shoulder as he straightens up. He takes a deep breath. “I’m okay.”

“Here, you take this,” Sam tells Dean, handing him the crowbar. “I was doing all right with the axe back there,” he adds, hefting the tool with a wry smile.

Dean takes the crowbar. Iron. Ghosts, then. “Angry spirits?” he asks.

Sam frowns. “Uh, yeah, Dean. No kidding.”

Sam hurries him along again, guiding him with a grip on his elbow and picking out their path through the unfamiliar trees. They’ve traveled a little over half a mile when Dean spots a tiny log cabin ahead. Sam pauses at the edge of the clearing it’s in, and suddenly Dean feels a draft of cold air like a freezer door opening behind them.

Dean whirls around, which does no good to his head, just in time to see his brother swing his axe into the first of a horde of gaunt, ragged men converging on them. For a moment Dean gapes—he’s never seen more than two or three spirits at a time—before his brain kicks into gear. He brandishes the crowbar, but Sam shoves him toward the cabin. “Go!” he orders, swinging.

Dean’s knocked back onto his ass from one of the spirit’s blasts; he takes out two or three with the crowbar as he’s getting to his feet. He hits out wildly, stumbling a little as he turns to look for Sam.

Sam’s managed to clear out a good dozen of the spirits, even hampered as he is by the duffel bag, and Dean’s amazed at how quick he is. Sam’s always been agile, but he seems almost superhuman now, and there is something else in the way he moves, beyond mere ease and vigor: more like joy.

They reach the side of the cabin; Sam pushes Dean flat against the wall. “Stay close. The salt circle underground extends only a little beyond the perimeter.”

“Where’s the fucking door?” Dean pants.

Sam laughs. “Opposite side,” he says cheerfully. “Just our luck. Almost there, though.”

Dean takes a good look at his brother. “What’s wrong with you? You look like you’re having the time of your life.”

“What, and you’re not?”

Dean’s head is aching, but that aside, he has to admit that now they’re safe, it is kind of fun. If only he knew what was going on. He reaches the last corner of the cabin and feels the door behind his back. It has no handle and opens freely when he pushes on it. Then they’re inside; he can’t see anything in the sudden darkness. Sam bolts the door, pats his arm, and sighs. “Well,” he says, “there’s a lot more of them than we thought.”

Dean finds a small bed in the dimness of the one-room cabin as his eyes adjust; he sits on it heavily and rubs his temples. “Okay, now you can tell me what the hell is up with all those damn ghosts,” he says, lying back on the uncomfortable surface.

He feels Sam sit on the other side of the bed. “Hey, you feeling worse?” his brother asks anxiously.

“No, I feel okay,” Dean soothes him. “Just a little weird, like I’m not really sure what’s going on right now.”

“Dean, that is not okay,” Sam protests. “What do you mean? You can’t remember?”

“I’m okay,” Dean insists. “Just tell me we’re doing. We’ve been hunting…” Dean prompts.

Sam hesitates for a moment before replying, “We’ve been looking for a box of werewolf bones buried out here in these woods—”

“Wait, what? Why?”

“I’m _telling_ you! Bobby needs them for a spell, so—”

“Wait, Bobby? Like Uncle Bobby, Bobby Singer?” Dean asks, opening his eyes and looking up at Sam.

Sam laughs. “ ‘Uncle Bobby’? We haven’t called him that since we were kids. Yeah, Dean, that’d be the one.”

“But—” Dean brightens at the thought of Bobby Singer, whom he has always adored though he hasn’t seen him for a long time. “He and Dad are talking to each other?”

“For now, yeah. You know them, they never fall out for long.”

“Wow. So go on, we’re looking for werewolf bones.”

“Yeah, we got ’em. In the duffel.”

“Okay, so we’ve got the bones, then why are we camping out in the woods in—are we in California?”

“Idaho, Dean. It’s an old hunter cabin in Idaho,” says Sam. A worried line appears between his eyebrows. “The bones were buried in the cellar. And now we’re trying to get them out of here, but we keep getting attacked by those damned ghosts.”

“Gotcha.” Dean yawns loudly and closes his eyes again.

“Hey,” says Sam, “I don’t think you should sleep. I’m pretty sure you’ve got a concussion, at least.”

“Mm-hmm,” Dean answers. He can already feel himself floating into a dream, a weird dream about a djinn and a guy named Rudy; he’s waiting for Rudy but he’s afraid he’s too late.

“Dean!” Sam says sharply, and Dean, with a nagging feeling that something is amiss, forces his eyes open again.

*****

“Oh,” says a voice, mildly surprised and not unpleasant, “you’re awake.”

Dean blinks. He’s lying directly on the metal slats of a rusty iron bed frame, tied to it by the ankles and wrists. He stares upward; it’s bright, and he’s in a small room with four arched windows, one set in each wall near the very high ceiling. He can see the sky through them and has the impression that he’s high up, like it’s a tower. He turns his head slowly, and encounters the owner of the voice.

She’s young, no older than twenty, Dean guesses, small and pale with shoulder-length dark hair, wearing a thin lacy top and a long tiered gauzy skirt. She’s sitting on a metal desk chair against the wall, legs crossed, looking like a typical college student waiting for a friend to join her at a coffee shop.

“He’s looking for the other one,” she says when they make eye contact, as if he’d asked her a question.

“What other one?” he asks cautiously.

“Your friend, the one who’s coming to rescue you.”

Dean bristles at the mention of rescue. Sure, he’s tied up in the tower of this godawful wreck of a building like your typical princess, but that doesn’t mean he needs _rescuing_. He just needs a few minutes to slip his bonds. The rope that his captor used is old and stiff, and he can feel the knots loosening as he surreptitiously wriggles. “He’s got it wrong. No one’s coming.”

The young woman shakes her head and says gently, “He knows. He read your mind, when he first touched you. He knows everything you know.” She surveys Dean with a calculating and appreciative eye. “And when I get you, I’ll know everything you know.”

Dean grimaces. “I’ll probably regret asking, but what do you mean by _when you get me_?”

“He just wants your blood. I’m a ghoul. I take the rest. Don’t worry, you’ll be dead by then.” She has a brisk, matter-of-fact manner that would be funny if he wasn’t in danger of dying. He flexes his left hand—he can slip it free now, and if he could just get her to take her eyes off him for a moment, he may be able get at the little folding knife in his pocket.

“Oh, great, that eases my mind. So you’re a ghoul, in cahoots with a djinn. Wow. But you know, it makes sense in a demented evil way, which is what you are.”

“Gee, that’s not at all judgmental,” the girl—he can’t help thinking of it as a girl—scoffs, teasingly. “But it does make sense, doesn’t it? Djinn are so wasteful. Why leave you to the worms, when I can use you?”

“Well, sorry if I’d rather not be your lunch today.”

“Me or the worms, what difference does it make?” she says.

“Oh good God,” Dean groaned. “So you and this djinn are best buddies. On a big ol’ killing spree, are you?”

She looks offended. “No.” A tendon in her neck flexes as she sets her jaw. “I’m a scavenger. I don’t hurt people.”

“Like hell you don’t. You just let other monsters do the dirty work for you. You’re happy to stand by and let him drain the life out of innocent people, so you can get the leftovers.”

She shrugs. “We do what we must, to survive. No different from you. You eat dead things too.” She leans forward and says, “Look, humans die all the time. My djinn gives them a good death, a gentle death. He makes their wishes come true.” Dean thinks of the silver knife in his boot, with the dried flecks of lamb’s blood clinging to it, and twists his wrists in their bonds.

The girl lifts her head suddenly and looks beyond him. Dean can’t turn his head that far, but he assumes there is a doorway directly behind him. She rises from her seat and stands next to the bedside, looking down at him with something like compassion.

“He’s coming back. Don’t worry. Go live in your dreams. Your wish has come true.”

*****

Dean sits bolt upright.

“Hey,” says Sam, relief coloring his voice. “You’re awake.” He’s sitting on a stool at a small table, apparently playing a game of solitaire, crowding the playing cards into the little space not occupied by a collection of aged radio equipment and random kitchen implements. “How you feeling?”

Dean stares at his brother and says groggily, “I was dreaming. About a girl.”

Sam chuckles gently. “Were you? Big surprise.”

“But,” Dean says, “she wasn’t really a girl. Or something.”

Sam snorts a laugh. “Okay, I don’t want to hear the details.”

“No, shut up, Sam—goddammit, it’s gone.” Dean slaps the lumpy mattress and lets out a grunt of frustration.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, Dean,” Sam soothes him. “We’ll be out of here soon enough, and I’ll get you to a doctor.”

“I don’t need a doctor,” Dean objects. “There’s something I’m supposed to remember.”

Dean rubs his hands over his face and struggles to clear his head. It’s important, his brain tells him. Something’s wrong. Sam shouldn’t be here. Dean was supposed to wait for someone. A hunter. What was his name? Rudy?

“What about Rudy?” Dean asks.

“Who’s Rudy?” Sam looks confused.

“He’s a hunter—didn’t Dad say to wait for him?”

Sam shakes his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dean.”

“I just—Dad wouldn’t let us go out on our own, would he?”

“Let us? What the hell do you mean?” Sam asks, laughing.

“So—so, just bear with me—we’ve been hunting together, right?”

“Ye-es.” Sam raises his eyebrows quizzically as he draws the word out slowly.

“Just us two,” Dean continues. Sam nods and fiddles with the grubby cards in his hand.

“How long?” Dean persists.

“On this hunt?”

“No, in general.”

“It’s been, what, a year or so? Since I graduated high school, a few months after that, right?”

“A year. And you’re okay with this?” Dean studies his brother’s face for signs of resentment, but finds none.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” Sam asks, surprised. “You’re acting really strange, dude.”

“Yeah, just—here, just tell me this: didn’t you have other plans after high school?” Dean is sure that this is true, but his conviction grows weaker as he looks at his brother’s open, questioning expression.

“Other plans? Like what?”

“Any other plans, besides hunting.”

Sam blinks and shakes his head. “No.”

“Not…college?” Dean ventures.

Sam laughs. “Dean, I talked this all out with you years ago. The world’s full of lawyers and doctors and programmers. Hunters, not so much. Why are you bringing it up now?”

“I don’t know, it’s something I been thinking about.”

Sam squints at him in puzzlement and says slowly, “What, like I’d go to college and you’d…what?”

“I’d still hunt, I guess.”

“Without me? No way, man. I’d never let you.” Sam looks down, sweeps up the cards from the tabletop, and straightens the deck in his hand.

A small, fierce warmth wells up inside Dean at this declaration. “No?” he asks, his throat tightening around the word.

“No, ’cause you’d be so lonely and pathetic, I’d never hear the end of it.” Sam taps the cards against the table for emphasis and flashes Dean a grin.

“Shut up,” Dean returns with his own grin.

“Plus you need me to save your sorry ass once in a while,” Sam adds, and Dean reaches over to swat at his arm.

“So what’s the plan to save my sorry ass this time?”

“Well, while you were asleep I got ahold of Bobby,” Sam says. “I described the spirits to him, and he says there were lots of accidents at one of the old logging camps around here back in the day. Might have something to do with that. He’s sending some guys in to help us.”

“What, to rescue us?” Dean says, dismayed. “Oh, man.”

“It’s not so bad,” Sam protests. “We got caught short for once. This wasn’t even supposed to be a hunt. At least we got the werewolf bones.”

“So we just wait?” Dean asks. Something in the back of his brain tells him that urgency is called for, but he can’t remember why.

“Yeah, and not a bad thing for you with your head the way it is.”

“I’m fine!” Dean insists.

“All right, all right. Are you hungry? All we have are protein bars and trail mix.”

“No thanks.”

“Wanna play cards?”

“Not really.”

“Oh, come on. It’ll keep you awake. Couple hands of poker. Or gin, haven’t played that in a while, have we?”

Dean stares. “What did you say?”

“Poker. Or gin.”

Dean sees a flickering blue light out of the corner of his eye and feels a sharp pain in his arm. He shuts his eyes hard as the word gin echoes in his brain. Djinn, his brain tells him. Something about a djinn, a hunt gone wrong, and a girl who’s not really a girl.

Sam shuffles the deck of cards once, then twice, before looking at Dean.

“Ghouls,” Dean gasps. Not djinn, ghouls. “Sam, what do you know about ghouls?”

“What?”

“Ghouls!”

“Is that a card game?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake—monsters, Sam, ghouls, tell me about them,” Dean says impatiently. “They eat dead people, right? What else?”

“Well, uh—you know, Dean, your conversational skills are really going down the toilet, by the way—they take on the form of their vics, like shapeshifters.”

“That’s it. That’s what I forgot,” Dean exclaims wildly. “Some families reported more than one missing. She goes back, takes another one with her. Back to the djinn.” Dean has a clear picture now of Rudy, his motel room, his map, his notes. He swings his legs off the edge of the bed and leans forward to get a good look at his brother.

Sam pulls back from him. “Dean, calm down,” he says in a low voice. “What are you talking about?”

Dean squints at him narrowly. “You’re not real. This—” he waves a hand at their surroundings—“is not real.”

Sam tenses up, blinking hard, but his voice is calm when he speaks. “Dean. Hey. We’re gonna get you out of here, and everything’s gonna be all right, okay?” He comes over to sit next to Dean on the bed.

“No, this is a dream. I figured that much out,” Dean says, getting up to stand in front of Sam. “ ‘Your wish has come true,’ she said. This is what she meant.”

Sam’s eyes are intense with worry as he looks up. “You’re not making sense,” he says gently. “Listen to yourself. You’ve been hit on the head; you’re a little mixed up now.”

“Not gonna work, Sam,” Dean says, and Sam looks away.

“Okay, then,” Sam concedes flatly. He tosses his playing cards onto the mattress. “I’m not real. So what? Isn’t this what you wanted? Someone to share the hunts with? Ride around the country killing evil things and making the world safe?”

“Sure,” Dean replies. “But out in the real world, real people are in danger.”

“Dad will take care of it. Or that guy Rudy. Or some other hunter. The weight of the world is not all on you, Dean.”

“No, this one is on me, Sam,” Dean insists, his voice rising. “This one’s on me, because I fucked up. I fucked up, Sammy, and that ghoul’s gonna go after you once I’m dead.”

He steps past his brother, giving him a pat on the shoulder. “Sorry, but I got to get back to the djinn’s lair in California. Can’t wait around for the cavalry.” Grabbing the pickaxe, he heads for the door.

Sam yanks him back by the shoulder and blocks his passage. “You can’t go out there. Forest full of angry spirits, remember?”

Dean pulls away angrily and shouts, “I got a fighting chance. Let me go, Sam.” He tries to shoulder past his brother, but he’s forgotten how strong and quick Sam is in this world. Sam catches hold of the axe with one hand and grabs his arm in the other, wrenching hard, and Dean’s brought to the ground by a sudden searing pain.

*****

When he opens his eyes he sees birds, round gray doves perching in the high arched windows. Trapped in a tower, he remembers, with a djinn and a ghoul. This is the real part. This is not the dream. The girl, the ghoul, is sitting in her metal chair again, this time a little closer to the rusted bed frame, studying him with disapproving eyes.

“You’re very tenacious,” she says. “It must be the hunter in you. Why do you keep coming back?”

Dean grits his teeth. “I got a job to do.”

“But you should be happy. The djinn is making your wish comes true,” she chides. “Everyone else was happy. Happier dying than they’d been during their lives. I should know; I consumed all their memories.”

“What about their families? Think they’re happy, their kid goes missing, never comes back?”

“Listen, I’m not cruel. I return, give them a little closure. One last good memory of the dead. You know, hugs and I’m sorry and I love you and all that.”

“That’s why all the victims came back once and then disappeared again for good.”

“Yes. I don’t have to do it, but I like to.”

“I don’t believe you,” Dean spits out, infuriated by the girl’s smug little smile.

“Beg pardon?” She looks surprised at this incivility.

“Sometimes there are two vics, siblings. You’re going for seconds, aren’t you? Getting greedy.”

“Oh, you think it’s greed? Carelessness? It’s compassion, that’s what it is.” She looks earnestly at Dean, lifting her hands from her lap. “Sometimes I find siblings that are so close, so tied up in one another that it would be cruel to leave one of them alone.”

Rattled, Dean stammers, “Why—why not take the parents too?”

“Too old. My djinn likes them young.”

She drops her hands, looks down at Dean’s horrified expression, and says with quiet resignation, “You consider me a monster, but I do have a heart. My kind would call me soft.” She stares up at the doves, paired off up in the windows. “I haven’t seen any other ghouls in a long time,” she murmurs. “I know what it’s like, to be so lonely you wish you were dead.”

Dean knows it’s a trick, a monster’s ploy, but for a moment, as she sits with her eyes lifted like a pious figure in a Renaissance painting, he believes her.

“My djinn told me that you have a brother,” she continues sadly. “He’ll mourn you. But not for long.”

She crosses her arms over her chest, rises from her seat, and walks slowly out of Dean’s range of sight; he hears her footsteps tap lightly on the old wooden floors as she leaves the room. He attempts to get his left hand free of the loosened rope, but his numb arm refuses to work right, and his fingers are heavy and clumsy. Feeling lightheaded and close to panic, he wrenches his hand free and fumbles for his pocketknife.

He’s too late. With a sudden flutter of wings that sound like shuffling cards, the doves in the windows disappear, and Dean knows the djinn has returned.

*****

Dean’s kneeling on the rough wood floor of the cabin, almost crying with frustration.

“Why won’t you let me go?” he snarls at Sam.

Sam tosses the pickaxe aside and throws up his hands. “Oh, you’re making it my fault now?”

“No, no, come on, Sam, I need your help.” Dean gets to his feet and paces around the tiny confines of the room. “I’ve got to get back. Help me think.”

“According to you, I don’t even exist,” says Sam. “This is all you.”

“Yeah, that’s great.” Dean stands still and digs his nails into his palms, then pulls at his hair, but mere pain, evidently, will not take him back to the real world.

“You need to know,” Sam says patiently, “how to wake yourself up from a dream. Now, you could try scaring yourself awake, but you’re already scared shitless.”

“Thanks, Sam,” snaps Dean.

Sam lays a hand on Dean’s arm, and it feels warm and real and solid. “You shouldn’t be scared. You’re safe here, Dean. I’m safe. You can’t die in a dream.”

“Wait,” says Dean. “Say that again.”

“What?”

“ ‘You can’t die in a dream.’ When you’re dreaming, and you think you’re about to die, you never die. You just wake up.” He shakes off his brother’s hand and paces to the far wall of the cabin. He turns and looks at the bed. His ivory-handled .45 is lying on it, the sweet little pistol that he loves and that Sam’s always coveted.

Sam’s eyes follow Dean’s gaze, and they both lunge for the weapon at the same time. Dean is marginally faster.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” he says. He looks around the room, at the table crowded with junk, the pickaxe and crowbar on the floor, Sam’s deck of cards spilled across the bed. “The ghost thing, that was kinda fun in a way. Crazy, but fun, like a movie. We would’ve made a great team, you and me.” He bites his lip. “Too bad I can’t stay.” He raises the gun and clicks the safety off, and his brother draws his breath in sharply.

“No, Dean, wait.” Sam’s voice is soft, but tense with desperation.

“Sorry, little brother. This is how I get back. I’ve got to die.”

“Dean, no, this dream of yours is like the plot of every stupid testosterone-filled movie you love. You don’t die. You’re the hero. You save the day. You get the beautiful girl in the end,” Sam insists.

Dean shakes his head vehemently. “No, no, that’s not right.” He laughs weakly. “I’m not the hero; _you’re_ the hero. I’m the guy, the guy you forgot about, the guy who takes the bullet, the guy who throws himself on the grenade, the guy whose last word is _run_.”

_I’m the guy you mourn, but not for long._

“You’re serious,” Sam says incredulously. “You actually believe that. And you’d really do this? You’d leave me all alone?”

Dean feels a surge of anger. “Why not?” he says coldly. “You did.” He curses himself for the tears beginning to sting his eyes.

His brother flinches as if struck. “No,” he protests, shaking his head. “I didn’t. _I_ didn’t,” he repeats, emphasizing the difference between himself and the real Sam. He reaches out hesitantly, and Dean doesn’t back away. “This is how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it? You and me.”

Dean tightens his grip on the gun and shakes his head. Sam takes a tentative hold of his sleeve. “This is what you wished for.” His hand slips lower and closes gently over his wrist. “Right?” he asks softly. “You and me against the world.”

Dean sees his brother through a watery blur. “I don’t know,” he says helplessly.

“Sure you do,” Sam says with a little smile. “Stay awhile,” he urges. He gives Dean’s wrist a tiny squeeze. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

Dean closes his eyes, letting his tears drop freely, and his brother takes the gun from his hand.

His mind’s last protest— _what have you done?_ —fades into an unearthly sense of relief as Sam pulls him into a hard embrace, his arm clutching so tight around Dean’s neck that he can’t even take a breath to sob.

*****

Somebody’s choking him. No, just shaking him, and it’s really annoying, so he opens his eyes. Rudy, with his hair looking remarkably like a bird’s nest, is staring down at him with mingled relief and disgust.

“Rudy, goddammit,” Dean croaks out, “where were you?”

“Yeah, you’re welcome.” Rudy hacks through his bonds, then holds up his red-stained knife. “I had some trouble finding lamb’s blood. Goat’s blood, dime a dozen, but lamb’s blood, this time of year? In the end, I wasn’t even sure if I actually got lamb’s blood, but it worked”—waving toward the desiccating corpse of the djinn—“so I guess it was. And then _that_ thing, the girl—caught me off guard, I will say. Took a headshot to take her out, and now her goo’s all over you; blew open like a potato in a microwave—”

“Rudy, shut up,” Dean murmurs. “Jeez, a call would’ve been nice.”

“I tried! I couldn’t reach you.” Rudy looks him over and deftly ties a handkerchief over a small freely bleeding wound on Dean’s left arm. “Why’d you come charging in here on your own, anyway?”

“I didn’t! I got ambushed in the woods.” Dean struggles to his feet and leans heavily on the back of a chair. Rudy’s face is swaying slowly before his eyes, and his mouth seems to be moving too fast.

“Hell, you’re lucky I got here when I did. They were arguing over you, those two. The djinn was feeding off you, but the girl wanted to kill you right away. Said you were dangerous. That you were strong.”

“Oh, yeah?” Dean manages, just before he faints.

*****

It’s acutely embarrassing to be driven back to your father like you’re the kid who threw up in PE class. “Just take me back to my car,” Dean complains. “I’m fine now.”

“The hell you are,” Rudy counters. “Even if you were, I wouldn’t take any chances with John Winchester’s precious boy.”

“ _What?_ ” Dean sputters.

Rudy smirks a little. “You should hear him go on about you,” he says. “You’d think the sun shone outta your ass.”

Dean gives him a sidelong glance, but Rudy doesn’t appear to be joking. “Well,” Dean says loudly to cover his sudden self-conscious blush, “that’s news to me.”

John is surprisingly calm about the whole deal, which, after all, ended well even though Dean did not cover himself in glory. Rudy is kind and doesn’t mention any of the more humiliating details—Dean being tied up and under the djinn’s spell when he had burst in, or Dean falling to the floor like a Victorian maiden in need of smelling salts—but it’s clear, even so, that on this job Dean was more hindrance than help.

Rudy’s in high spirits when he leaves father and son lodging in a Motel 6 near the freeway, fifty miles from the Thalia orphanage. “I owe you one,” Dean tells him, but he shrugs away both thanks and apology.

John closes the motel room door behind him, and Dean waits for his _isn’t-there-something-you-want-to-tell-me?_ glare, an expression he dreads more than the shouting.

“You should take a shower,” is all John says, though. “And I’ll go get us some food. Burger King okay? There’s one next door.”

Dean nods wordlessly, and John reaches out to pat his shoulder gingerly. “What do you want?” John asks.

“Anything,” Dean says tiredly, but his father looks annoyed at this wishy-washy answer. “A double Whopper,” he amends before John can voice his irritation. “And onion rings.”

After John leaves, Dean stands under the feeble flow of the shower, presses his thumbs to his temples, and fights with a rising desire to cry.

*****

“I want to go see Sam,” Dean announces, bracing himself for his father’s objection. To his surprise, John looks at him mildly and nods.

“He is my brother,” Dean continues.

“Of course. Dean, you don’t have to justify yourself to me.”

“I just—he’s the only brother I’ve got.” Dean doesn’t know why he keeps talking, only that he wants his father to talk about Sam.

John pauses and scratches at his forehead, sighing deeply. “Yeah—” he exhales, looking down at the table. “I know.” He gets up and begins to stuff their discarded paper wrappings into the little motel trash can. “Dean, Sam will come back to us eventually. When he’s ready. In the meantime, he and I—it’s probably for the best we keep our distance. This isn’t bad—it’s part of his growing up. He needs to grow up.”

Dean asks lightly, “So when am I gonna grow up?”

“You grew up a long time ago, son.” John leans down to open the little fridge door. “Too fast,” he adds quietly as he reaches in for two more beers. It sounds more like an apology than a criticism, and Dean doesn’t know what to say.

“We’ll go get your car in the morning,” John says. He opens the beers and hands one of them to Dean. Dean’s drunk half of it before he realizes that it’s the first time he’s heard his father refer to the Impala as “your car.”

*****

Dean arrives at the Stanford campus in the early afternoon. It’s vast and intimidatingly beautiful with its red tile roofs, rows of low round arches, and long colonnades, glowing warm in the sunlight. He knows that a single phone call will bring Sam to him, but he’s determined to leave their meeting to fate. So he sits, and he waits to see if Sam will appear, walking around a corner or out of the shadows.

The greater part of his life is spent waiting, sometimes in boredom, sometimes in anticipation. Waiting for his clothes to dry in a laundromat, waiting for the cover of night so he can dig up a grave, waiting for a monster to return to its lair. No one here gives him a second glance; he’s got a book in his hand— _The Grapes of Wrath_ —and a backpack at his feet, and it’s an odd feeling to realize that, superficially at least, he blends in here as well as anywhere else.

He’s been sitting by the fountain that graces the front of the big library for two hours, occasionally getting up to wander around the quad, and he gives himself another half-hour. If he hasn’t spotted Sam by then, he’ll leave. It wasn’t meant to happen. The students—some of them milling around, some of them striding purposefully—look too young, too self-assured. Sam will stick out like a sore thumb, awkward, too quiet, always with a little melancholy, if not outright misery, in his eyes.

When Dean catches sight of him, he’s laughing. He’s laughing, at the center of a little group of people, towering above them. He shows the easy confidence of a young man comfortable in his own skin, somewhat like the Sam of Dean’s djinn-induced dream, but nothing like the real Sam that Dean remembers. He’s grown at least another inch since Dean’s last seen him, and Dean naturally finds this an affront to both himself and big-brotherhood in general.

Sam’s laughing, and Dean’s first instinct is to hide. That laughing look will change to resentment in an instant, and Dean doesn’t want to see it. He gathers himself together; intending to slip across the walkway, under the arches and into the quad.

Sam is still a good distance away when he turns his head and spots Dean just as he gets to his feet. His double-take is subtle, but Dean catches it clearly. Sam’s hurrying toward him before he can blink. At the halfway point, he breaks into a run, as though he can sense Dean’s desire to turn tail. He’s not a particularly graceful runner, and he looks like a clumsy golden retriever as he dodges around people. Dean looks away sheepishly as Sam grabs him by the arms, large hands squeezing hard, pulling him off balance and then righting him again.

“Dean—” Sam gasps. “It’s you.”

“Hey, Sammy,” Dean says calmly.

“Dean,” Sam says again, releasing his arms and, thank God, smiling.

“Yeah, you said that.” Dean grins and claps a hand to his brother’s arm.

“What—” Sam begins again. “I mean, why—” he hesitates, apparently trying to rephrase “What the hell are you doing here?” into a less belligerent-sounding form.

“Just passing through. Thought, why not stop by and see you?” Dean looks around them. “In your new environment,” he adds. Sam’s sweet ivory-towered new home, where he’s been transformed from forlorn neglected little puppy into happy tail-wagging dog, apparently.

The unspoken sentiment must show on his face, for Sam’s smile falters a little. Dean adds quickly, “You look great. You doing okay?”

“Yeah, I—” Sam breaks off as his little gaggle of friends catches up to him. Dean has no idea what, if anything, Sam has told people about his family or his upbringing. He stands quietly, willing to follow his brother’s lead, though a diabolical urge to blurt out every eyebrow-raising fact rises in his gut as Sam takes a step back from him.

“Hey, guys, this is my brother,” Sam throws out.

“Dean?” queries one of the guys, to Dean’s surprise.

“Yeah. This is Dean.” Sam runs through their names: Brady, Prakhar, Erin, Laura. They are distantly polite as they are introduced and, one by one, extricate themselves from the conversation and go on their way, leaving the brothers alone.

“So,” Dean begins.

Sam eases in closer to him, anxiously conspiratorial. “Dean—”

“Yeah, I know: what the hell am I doing here, right, Sam?” Dean interrupts sharply.

“Is everything okay?” Sam asks, and Dean softens instantly at the flicker of worry in his eyes.

“Yeah. Everything’s fine.” Dean pauses. “I was passing through like I said. I’m gonna catch up with Dad in Oregon.”

“Why didn’t you call?”

“I was going to,” Dean lies. “I was just looking around first.”

Sam nods. “What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, no offense, but you don’t look that great. Did you get hurt?”

“Nah.” His brother gives him a skeptical look, and Dean admits, “Just a little.”

“Dean—”

“I lost a little blood. Not a lot.”

Dean waits, but Sam does not ask what he had been hunting. Instead he says, “Yeah, and Dad’s pissed at you, I bet.”

“What? No.” Sam shrugs, and Dean has to fight down his impulse to jump to their father’s defense. But dammit, Sam’s going to hear about this hunt whether he wants to or not. “It was a djinn, and— _and_ , get this: a ghoul. They were holed up in this old orphanage; you should’ve seen it, Sammy, it was like the perfect horror movie setting—”

Dean stops. Sam has been frowning, and now he is staring into the distance, his jaw tensed. “So you took ’em out?” he says during the pause, without looking at Dean.

“Rudy did.”

Sam snaps back to attention. “Who’s Rudy?” he asks quickly.

“Oh, he’s—Dad knows him, he’s young, not a bad hunter. Dad wanted me to work this job with him.”

Sam’s eyes are wide now. “Why?”

“Jeez, who knows? Dad’s been—I dunno, I feel like he’s trying to matchmake me with a partner sometimes.” Dean laughs. “Fuckin’ embarrassing.”

Sam’s answering laugh sounds forced. “Well, let me know when the wedding is,” he says, but a tautness in his voice makes the quip fall flat.

The two of them stand silent and awkward until Dean shifts and announces, “Anyway, I gotta go.”

“Now?” Sam looks stricken. “Can’t we go get something to eat together at least?”

“Don’t you have classes?”

“No, not this afternoon. I’m supposed to work, but I’ll call in sick.”

“Where you working?”

“Just waiting tables. A diner-type joint. Too bad we can’t go there; you’d love the cheeseburgers.” Sam’s smile is back, his dimples appealingly persuasive. “Come on, Dean.”

“Yeah, sure, that’d be great. Just—” Pausing, Dean looks around him at the fountain, the landscaping, the leafy trees. Everything is golden and green. It’s pretty here. Too pretty.

“What?”

“Can we go somewhere…else?” Somewhere else, away from the charm of all these fresh-faced innocents; somewhere else, a quiet place where you can pretend you’re dreaming; somewhere else, where you can bring out your memories, little bits of debris you pull up from your depths transformed into pearls.

They walk across the campus to get to Dean’s car, and Sam points out landmarks on the way. He greets a couple more acquaintances and a professor. Dean only half-listens to Sam’s tour-guide comments; he concentrates on the feeling of quiet joy underlying Sam’s words. _This is what you were wishing for, all that time, Sammy. But you didn’t need a djinn to get you here. You did it yourself._

Sam directs him to a run-down taqueria in East Palo Alto, and they take their food and park the Impala on an access road at the edge of the salt marshes bordering the bay. “I don’t know if we’re allowed out here,” Sam remarks, as though any prohibitions had ever stopped them before.

“Law-abiding Sammy,” Dean grins.

Sam shuffles his drink and his paper bag of tortilla chips before looking at him. “I’m actually thinking I might want to go to law school.”

“Oh God,” says Dean involuntarily, and Sam blinks hard and stiffens in the seat beside him. “No, no, it’s just—I kinda thought you’d end up a geeky professor type.”

Sam snorts. “Did you?” he asks.

“Yeah. Sitting in your library surrounded by books.”

Sam narrows his eyes at him appraisingly. “Huh,” he murmurs, with a faint note of surprise.

“Just can’t picture you in a suit,” Dean continues. “In a courtroom.” But he can, he absolutely can. “And you’d have to cut that hair, you know.”

“No I wouldn’t,” Sam bursts out.

“Yes you would. Grow that hair any longer and you’ll be a freakin’ yeti. It’s bad enough you’re ten feet tall now—who’s gonna hire Chewbacca for their lawyer?”

Sam’s laughing now. “What am I then, a yeti or a Wookiee? Besides, Chewie, as you know—”

“Oh hell no, don’t you start,” Dean interrupts, and Sam grabs his arm hard, shaking it. “Hey, watch it,” protests Dean, lifting his Coke bottle and swatting back, and for a moment, grappling with each other, they’re transformed, gleeful and untroubled.

Dean lets Sam win the little wrestling match before any spillage occurs. Sam sighs and slumps comfortably back into the seat. He half-turns and casts a lingering look around the car, taking it all in. “I miss it,” he says. Dean understands this to mean _I miss us_ , not _I miss this car_ , and his chest tightens a little.

“Me too,” Dean replies, and Sam’s mouth curves into a brief, gratified smile.

They finish their food, get out of the car to stretch, and wander down a path closer to the water. Dean watches a tiny plane descending toward the airport and says, “It’d be nice to sit out here at night. Watch the stars.”

“Too much light pollution,” Sam objects absently. He’s studying a large white egret standing alone in the shallow water some distance away.

They don’t talk much more. Dean wants to say something about their father, but he knows that will be inflammatory. To talk about keeping in touch will sound inane, and to even think about telling Sam about the dream-world he’d been in—well, that’s just impossible.

The sun is settling low in the sky when Sam gets out of the car in front of his apartment, the light streaking warm through the trees that line the pretty residential street. As Sam bends down into the window of the Impala, Dean tips his head to get his last good look in. “I’ll see you,” he says vaguely.

“Hey,” Sam says quietly, his eyes wide and earnest, with a single line of worry between his eyebrows, “why don’t you stay awhile?” His hands flutter briefly on the window frame, like birds shaking out their wings, and Dean’s own hands itch to grab, and clutch, not a nice feeling, too much like desperation, too much like spite. He’ll wring the life out of those birds if he gets them in his hands.

He glances down at his own hand resting on the seat back and shakes his head. “I can’t. I got things to take care of.” Not Sam, though. Not anymore.

Sam turns his head to follow a passing bicyclist, shading his eyes from the sun. “Yeah. Okay.” He straightens and gives the Impala a gentle slap on the roof.

“Wait,” Dean says. “I got something for you,” and he fumbles for the little sharp-cornered plastic box that contains his Led Zeppelin II cassette and, tucked snugly behind it, his secret stash of five neatly folded hundred-dollar bills.

Sam receives this from his outstretched fingers with a bemused look. “Dude, how the hell will I play this? Besides, this one’s your favorite.”

“Jesus, just take it, will you?” Take it: a memento, a souvenir, a keepsake. A relic. Starting the car, Dean gives Sam a nod and a last short wave, just a flash of his open palm. His brother’s mouth forms the word “Thanks,” inaudible over the engine’s rumble. He casts a thin distorted shadow on the sidewalk.

Dean pulls away from the curb. He travels a couple of blocks before making a right turn, and then another, and then another to circle back again. He bargains with himself: if Sam is still standing there, then Dean will stay awhile. Not long. A day. No more than two. Three at most.

He takes the last turn. The street is empty. The door of Sam’s apartment building is shut: clean, blank, final. The shadows of the trees stretch long and point to nothing.

Dean breathes again and turns his face back to the road. If his eyes are stinging, he can blame it on the blinding rays of the brilliant and oblivious sun.

 

**Author's Note:**

> As far as I know, there is no town in California called Thalia. The “orphanage” where the djinn holes up is based loosely on the [Preston School of Industry (Preston Castle)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_School_of_Industry#/media/File:Preston_Castle_1.jpg) in Ione, CA.
> 
> The marsh area where Dean and Sam sit at the end of the story is [Ravenswood Open Space Preserve](https://www.google.com/search?q=ravenswood+open+space+preserve&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=VtyEVbaBGsTWoATJmanIBQ&ved=0CFUQsAQ&biw=1598&bih=1218). I’m not actually sure if you can get a car in there (probably not), but we’ll pretend.
> 
> Thank you for reading. I appreciate any feedback. You can find me on tumblr at: [amisplacedlonelyheartsad.tumblr.com](http://amisplacedlonelyheartsad.tumblr.com) or on LJ at: [misplaced_ad.livejournal.com](http://misplaced_ad.livejournal.com)


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